Sapphire:Sessions:20140927
Countess Bastress, possessed by a malign spirit, lies unconscious in the breakfast room. Some guards carry in the priest of Dar, who they found barely alive. He has massive bruises, cracked ribs, and burst blood vessels. By the priest's weakened aura, Chalker judges that he is hanging on to life by sheer willpower.
So that his guards will obey the outsiders, Count Bastress throws a signet ring to Chalker and another to Shawna.
Searching for Prewin's nanny, Shawna finds her unconscious in the nursery. Another woman is in the room looking out the window. She turns and hesitates at the sight of Shawna's drawn sword. After dealing with the possessing spirit, Shawna peers out the window. A dozen spirits loiter at the wood's edge, and a flock of black birds is perched in the trees. Three saddled horses, wearing Bastress's colors, stand off to the side. Shawna rouses the nanny and sends the two women to the breakfast room for medical treatment. She locates the head of the ghostly guards, Jason Branvold, who explains that the spirits of those who have had grievances against the Bastress family often show up during the Days of the Spirits. Shawna sends him and his squad to drive the spirits away.
Chalker calls for a basin of water and a soft towel and begins to gently dab the Countess's face. She opens her eyes, and at first seems normal and rational, noting that her husband hit her. Chalker: "Can I speak to the one possessing you?" Countess: "Where's the elf? Oh, she's gone to meddle elsewhere." The countess denies being possessed, but under Chalker's persistent questioning the spirit grudgingly gives her name, Anna Kell. Chalker: "I was sent here." Anna: "So was I." "Why do you risk the wrath of two of the First Chosen?" "You don't understand what the Days of the Spirit represent." "What is your grievance?" "That is for me to keep and cherish. This family has done me a disservice."
Count Bastress doesn't recognize the name Anna Kell. According to the records, she died in the year 2350. She sneers, "The ones I'm working with have several contingency plans." She claims that "at the right time and place" she could possess Chalker. A spirit had been assigned to each person in the manor, but there was more resistance than expected. Chalker: "It's because I told Dar you were coming." Anna: "You surprise me. You didn't strike me as being so faithful to the First Chosen."
Since the Countess awakened, Trace has noticed that the mana flow is changing, as though a powerful magic artifact were charging up. He alerts Chalker to this.
Chalker tries to look at Anna's aura but is blocked. Dabbing the Countess's face again, he says, "You're looking warm." Anna: "I won't hurt the Countess."
Chalker notices around the Countess's neck a gold chain and a silver chain. He extends his hand and lifts the chains and gets a heavy electrical shock. Anna: "Don't be a naughty man." This time Chalker uses his metal power, abruptly snatching the chains upward. The chains bite into the Countess's skin, drawing blood. A small black pebble dangles from the gold chain, while the silver one is decorated with a small cone-shaped silver object. Neither chain has a clasp.
Quickly and alertly, Rory pushes Thana out of the room. Chalker barely resists a spell. Trace can see that the black pebble is a powerful magic item; it is the artifact he had sensed earlier.
From the chain a bolt of lightning flashes at Chalker, who dodges it. Chalker pulls the chains off of the Countess and flips them to Trace, who hooks them around the end of his staff and grounds them, which creates a high-mana area around him. Rory, pushing Thana on out into the hallway, glances over his shoulder, sees two hostile spirits, and yells "Trouble! Can you see them?" "Yes!" replies Thana.
Rory advances upon the spirits. Trace teleports into the hallway near Rory, and the spirits' attention is immediately drawn to the chains on Trace's staff. Shawna had come upon a swordfight between a friendly and a hostile spirit; the hostile spirit flees, and Shawna shouts "Bring him down!"
One spirit tries to punch Rory in the chest, but misses. Another spirit drops to its knees near Trace's staff and grabs at the silver cone, but accidentally touches the black pebble; in consequence, the spirit is torn apart and sucked into the pebble. Chalker notices Anna Kell concentrating, pokes her between the eyes, then holds his finger hovering. The Countess's skin felt feverish. Rory shouts "Arm!" and his sword severs a spirit's arm, which seems to dissolve and flow away. Thana hides behind Rory.
Trace jabs his staff into another spirit, which is sucked into it. The Countess stiffens, and Chalker pokes her again. Chalker: "Are you through with this nonsense?" Anna: "We are done with this stage."
Trace wraps a rag around the staff, covering up the pebble. Tentatively he touches the cone; it feels cold and clammy. He puts it in a pouch.
Two of the spirit guards report to Shawna that they had to destroy the fleeing spirit to keep it from getting away.
Chalker: "It may be important to know who Mistress Kell was." Anna: "Do your research." Chalker: "Were you a thief?" Anna Kell is offended. The Count says that his wife has been tested "many times" and is not a mage.
Rory takes Thana and Trace through the keep to clear people. Trace touches his staff to one of them, and nothing happens. He casts an Aura spell and determines that another person is possessed; he touches his staff to them, and again nothing happens. Thana identifies another possessed person. About half of the unconscious people are found to be possessed.
Trace reaches out with his gloved left hand and pulls the silver cone out of his pouch. He waves it at a possessed person, whose eyes fly open and focus on the cone. Trace: "Come out of there!" Spirit: "It was so hard. We were healing the body. My task was to join with the others." Trace: "Continue to heal the body."
Shawna hops out a window. There are still black birds perched in the trees. Whistling sharply, she runs toward them. The birds take flight, and the ground beneath the trees is covered with bird droppings which emanate a sickly magic. She calls upon Yasseph (wind) and Agar (rain) to cleanse away the droppings.
Chalker locates a puncture mark in a vein of the Countess's upper left arm. He shows this to the Count, asking "Is this new?" The Count replies that it wasn't there yesterday. Chalker has the Count pull up his own sleeve, revealing a similar mark. Claude, however, doesn't have one. Chalker: "Anna Kell, do you care to explain?" Anna: "No." "Were you a mage?" "I am a mage." "Have you always been a mage?" "Of course."
Rory and Thana check the rest of the people in the keep and sort those possessed from those not possessed. Trace hands his staff to one of the guards after tying the cone pouch to it; his instructions are "If a ghost comes, poke it."
Thana also has a puncture mark; it wasn't there when she went to sleep. Claude's page hasn't been seen this morning. There is no mark on Prewin. Trace wonders if something was injected, or blood was drawn out.
Trace: "The spirits said they were collecting people who weren't possessed." Chalker: "Anna Kell, do you know who you work for?" The Countess merely looks at him without answering. Trace: "The cone could control her. I destroyed it." Anna Kell is visibly upset by this news, but quickly controls herself.
Chalker: "Who was the Count when you were alive?" Anna: "This man's grandfather." "How old were you when you were alive?" "Not old enough." "Were you young and beautiful? Old and haggard?" "Always beautiful and youthful." "When the elf comes back, you might be leaving." "Yes, she freed the young girl quite easily." "I think she's older than you." "They don't let the young ones out, I'm told." "Are you in the history books?" "I'm sure my passing was noted." "Did you have a husband?" "I was too busy to get married."
Trace asks Thana to take him to their historical records.
Shawna spies a man with a crossbow on the livery roof. As the man takes aim at her, Shawna summons a wind so strong it not only knocks the bolt aside, it shoves the man off-balance and he tumbles off the roof. Then a crowd of people on horseback come riding out of the barn. Cursing, Shawna locates her horse in its stall and gallops off after them. Figuring that she won't be able to stop them all, she rides down two of them, knocks them out, and slings them across their horses' backs.
When those inside the keep hear the commotion from the horses leaving the barn, Rory sets Striker loose. "Sic 'em!" Striker helps Shawna subdue her two captives.
Dar's priest recovers consciousness. Something bit him, he says, then "things of nightmare" assaulted him. "Dar held my hand" in order for him to survive the attack. His arm shows a deep gouge mark and dried blood. He has a massive headache and can barely focus. Chalker asks if he knows the name Kell. The Kells were a mage family from decades ago. The priest admits he won't be much help for a while, then dozes off.
Chalker: "I won't hurt the Countess, but I will break your ass out. You've been more tame without those two little things!" Anna: "It is a setback."
Shawna returns and has her two captives taken inside. She tells the Count that sixteen people got away.
Shawna recalls a royal family named Kell with strong magery. Their peak was about 300 years ago. About a hundred years ago the family was involved in assassinations and attempted usurpations and were subsequently wiped out. She recalls the names of two historians who chronicled that period.
Resigning herself to the inevitable, Anna Kell names the one who leads the attempt against the Bastress line: Gwee Balin, a rogue mage. Standing over the Countess with her face upturned, Shawna invokes Dar and Dara to grant Anna Kell the peace she never found in life. A shining light appears, and the possessing spirit is drawn upward and away.
Chalker detects a very slight difference in Count Bastress's aura from when he first checked it yesterday, but he can't pinpoint what it is.
Shawna enters the library where Trace and Thana are looking through various references. She calls for books written by two specific historians. "Why?" Thana asks. Shawna stares at the girl, who goes and retrieves the books. Trace reads aloud from the history of the Kell family. They had established a barony. Magery ran strongly in their bloodline. About a hundred years ago they were involved in some disputes over boundaries, water rights, and artifacts. The Kells committed many wrong acts, including assassination, drawing the attention of the Duke. The Kell matriarch, named Anna, had orchestrated most of it; had her plans succeeded, the Kells would have controlled as many as eight counties and a major trade route, and would have married into the Duke's family.
Trace shows the silver cone to Shawna. It appears to have been broken off of a larger artifact. Upon it are runes of communication and of control of spirits and undead. The communication would work at close range among those holding similar cones.
Stepping into proximity to Trace, Shawna suddenly senses the high-mana area around him and exclaims, "Cor's balls! What's that?" Chalker peers into the black pebble. Inside it's like a lump of charcoal, a black swirling mess; he experiences vertigo and a strong feeling of danger.
Next month, Thana is to be betrothed to the Duke's third son (who may one day soon become a baron). Not only will the marriage be advantageous to the Bastress family's position, Thana and the lad are really in love.
Chalker decides that the aura differences in the Count have to do with being primed for something, like a spell awaiting a command word.
Shawna suggests that Trace use the black pebble and Chalker use the cone to drive out the spirits from the people who are still possessed. Trace finds that one spirit is named Amos Kell, and tells him "We were given this task by Anna." When the black pebble has absorbed fifteen spirits, the high-mana area expands another three feet in radius and "feels" more chaotic, foreign, out of sync with reality. Chalker: "It's not from here, not of this plane. Like that guy with the funny hat."
The group discusses having the Bastress household spend the night in town, perhaps in one of the temples. Rory suggests, "How about we take them even further away?" He knows that there is a Venettian gate on the Count's property. Trace gets a base reading on the gate and the group goes out to the location. Trace sticks the staff upright into the ground and dirt starts to fly, forming a spiral stairway descending thirty feet to the solid stone top of a buried building. Beneath the stone, Chalker sees a meeting room with a large table. The mage lights illuminate the room as they enter.
The gate contains twelve slots. The upper right slot is filled with a green substance, which Shawna removes. The stuff is malleable; she rolls it into a ball, then it forms a disc like a large coin. Trace gets his "cheat sheet" from Rory and activates the gate into the hotel suite. An errand boy is sent back to the keep to bring the family.
Rory suggests they bring over some of the food stores from Danilon's mansion. Trace steps through first, then Chalker; lights come on, and Malcolm arrives, armed. Trace explains, "We came back to check on you." Malcolm replies, "The wards are holding. I was resting until you disturbed the gate." Trace and Chalker carry some food back through the gate, and Trace tells Malcolm, "We'll check back every so often."
Aboveground, Rory is keeping watch. He spots someone stealthing in from a different direction than the one the group came in from. Striker sniffs the air and indicates that the intruder is human. Rory can see that it is a man dressed to blend in with the forest.
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